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measure the effectiveness of marketing dollars spent on improving rankings in natural searches. Clients who license this software-as-a-service include FedEx, Best Buy, Staples, Siemens, and General Electric.

The Searchlight platform automatically performs tasks that companies’ in-house technical staff may not have the time or means to accomplish. “Large retailers may have hundreds of thousands of keywords and pages they are trying to track,” Dotterer says. “Throwing people at that problem is the difficult way of going about it.”

Not surprisingly, Dotterer is bullish about the influence he sees natural Web search results have on online customers. He believes such links are more likely to draw attention than the paid links promoted through search engines. “You rarely find someone who clicked on paid ads,” he says. Dotterer also believes links promoted via social media have yet to match the sway of such Web searches. “The social media aspect is sexy, but marketing in general has changed from outbound marketing to inbound,” he says.

Conductor has more cash coming inbound to further its own plans. Late last month the company raised $20 million in a Series C round led by Investor Growth Capital with participation from FirstMark Capital and Matrix Partners. The money will go toward development of the Searchlight platform, including new hires. Conductor has a staff of 85 and plans to add 50 new employees in 2013, Dotterer says. In addition to New York, Conductor has offices in Boston and near San Mateo, CA.

Keeping Conductor’s technology fresh, Dotterer says, well help the company stay nimble in this ever-evolving sector. “Google updates its algorithm every day of the year,” he says. “Sometimes those are big updates such as Panda and Penguin, or minor updates.”

João-Pierre S. Ruth is the editor of Xconomy New York. He can be reached at jpruth@xconomy.com and followed on Twitter @jpruth. Follow @jpruth